by Michelle Gunderson. Imagine you are 8 years old. Your parents respectfully requested that you not participate in standardized testing. Yet, your school system insists on putting the test in front of you, reading the directions, and making you sit quietly for the duration of the test. Now that over a thousand …
by Paul Horton. Part one of three. My son and I took our annual road trip last week. We listen to books on tape and blues as we travel. He is learning to drive so, for the first time, he was able to take the wheel for hours at a time while I bit my fingernails and chewed my gum. On the morning of our arrival to …
eraBy John Thompson. Valerie Strauss’s “’Education Reform’ Now a Pejorative Term to Many Progressive Democrats” and Jeff Bryant’s “Education ‘Reform’ Loses the Netroots” are just two of the recent celebrations of the way that Democrats and progressives are rejecting corporate school reform. …
Notes on building our movement and the AFT following the Los Angeles convention By Kipp Dawson (rank-and-file delegate to the AFT convention from Pittsburgh) This is a life-or-death time for the American Federation of Teachers. The July 12-14, 2014, convention reflected both positive movement, and continuing …
We just wanted to teach. When I was drawn to teach in Oakland, I saw a chance to give students the chance to do hands-on experiments, to answer their own questions, and explore the natural world. On field trips to the tide pools I found out some had never even been to the Pacific Ocean, an hour’s drive from …
New Jersey is making headlines this month as the bullying tactics of Governor Christie have gone beyond shouting down individual school teachers, which many in the media seemed to find amusing, and into the realm of political scandal as the “Bridgegate” emails came to light. Now Newark, New Jersey, is …
A New York Times article published on Saturday has uncovered some of the strategies billionaire Bill Gates is using to influence the future of education in America. Reporter Sam Dillon has dug beneath groups that appear to represent ordinary teachers or parents, and found that often, these groups are funded by the …
